The criminal division of the Bashkirian Supreme Court has upheld the verdict of the Kirovsky district court of Ufa delivered on December 20, 2010 in respect of Vladislav Simukhin, officer of the Extradepartmental security service company under the Oktyabrsky Department of Internal Affairs.

The Kirovsky district court found Simukhin guilty under p.1 article 105 of the RF criminal Code (murder, i.e. willful infliction of death to a person).  The convict was sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment in an increased-security penal colony.

You may remember that, according to the results of the public investigation conducted by the Bashkirian representation of the ICAT,  Vladislav Simukhin, serving in the company of the extradepartmental security service under the Oktyabrsky Department of Internal Affairs in Bashkiria, received his service gun in the control room of the Oktyabrsky Department of Internal Affairs and, being intoxicated, decided not to go on duty, instead he took some more alcohol, wrote a farewell letter to his mother and went to Ufa taking his service gun with him.  Simukhin spent the whole night boozing with his friends. In the morning the drunken sergeant felt an urge to go back to Oktyabrsky. He went to the taxi parking, his service gun and police uniform were in his bag. It was a tragic coincidence that on that day Ufa teacher Albert Mukhametzakirov was driving a taxi in order to earn some extra money. Simukhin got in his car, paid for the ride to the Dema district of Ufa, but later demanded that Mukhametzakirov should take him to Oktyabrsky or give the money back. They quarreled, Mukhametzakirov refused to take Simukhin to Oktyabrsky. The sergeant, being in a drunken haze, took his service gun out of the bag and shot the teacher in the head.   

Simukhin and his lawyers disagreed with the verdict considering it unlawful. In cassation appeals they claimed that Simukhin had fired by chance and the prosecution did not have proofs of malice. Lawyers of the Bashkirian representation of the Committee Against Torture represented the victims’ interests in the Bashkirian Supreme Court. They managed to refute the statements of the sergeant and his defense lawyer.

As a result, the appeals were dismissed.